Poisonous Fox

Kate scanned the pedestrians along the boulevard looking for potential fights, not that she expected to find anything good here.

Men and women were traveling about their business crowding the sidewalk. Most wore plain clothes and went unarmed, carrying no weapons of note. This marked them as simple laborers and of little interest to Kate. They posed little to no threat, and unless they ambushed her, they would prove an uninteresting challenge.

Rather than keeping an eye on them, she was scanning the wealthier pedestrians that walked at a leisurely stroll. They were set apart by their sloth and their high quality clothes, all in the latest fashions. At least Kate thought they might have been fashionable, but she was no expert, not on something so useless as that. No, what really drew her eye was the weapons that the wealthy wore. Many were ornamental and gaudy, though a few looked usable enough.

She would not make the mistake of underestimating any of them, however unlikely an altercation remained. If one was wealthy, then one could be Marked. And any glyph could make combat unpredictable.

And it was not just that they were possibly threats: there were interesting weapons as well. She saw more than one exotic piece, even a kusarigama. Though she did wonder if the owner knew how to use it. Kate had never fought someone wielding one before, and she made a note of it; she would have to find someone to duel later.

But not right now. She had business to attend to.

As they walked along the boulevard, following the Divide, they passed from the martial districts into the more commercial ones, where artisan trade goods were crafted and sold.

Women were strutting along, either leading trains of children or perhaps attempting to catch the eye of possible suitors. There were tailors and their paid models, there were signs slathered along the walls, and plenty of litter as well, though cleaners strove to sweep up the worst of it. Knights from the High Guard traveled to and fro checkpoints. The Low Guard kept posts and watch-towers on the crossings over the divide. And the Baronsguard traveled from shop to shop, making the rounds and collecting taxes.

And then there were those such as Kate and Gregory, who were traveling from Muster Square to the Caraveener’s Market, about a two mile trek along the boulevard. The area was nominally safe from violent crimes, though pickpockets and scoundrels had been known to smuggle themselves over the divide, or to hole up in cramped and narrow spaces where no self-respecting guard traveled.

Other than potential duels and fights (which normally Kate was the instigator of), it was the risk of pickpockets particularly that left Kate wary, with one hand on her most prized possession, her bastard sword, and another hand on her satchel. Though the best protection was constant vigilance, which was why, when she glanced at Gregory trailing behind her, she scoffed.

His attention had wandered; he practically slept on his feet as he watched trade-traffic move along the sunken highway following the Divide.

They were walking along the pedestrian boulevard that ran parallel to the sunken highway which divided Southbridge into halves, a western and eastern.

The highway, which was the sole remit of the High Guard, ran from the Jungles of Kaiva, across the Chasm, through Southbridge, and then up to Bath and beyond. With the highway being the only way to reach Kaiva and beyond, it experienced a high volume of caravan traffic. With such high traffic, the highway was actually a low-way, and ran along an artificial canyon ten yards deep, with a boardwalk and promenade on the good side and shanties built up on the other.

With the interesting and colorful trade traffic below, it was understandable that Gregory was distracted. Understandable, not excusable. Feeling somewhat charitable, Kate offered him correction.

“Guard your pockets,” Kate said.

“Hm?” he hummed the question, pulling his gaze away from the stream of meohr hauling long slabs of lumber north. Nearly all lumber had to be imported through Southbridge, and considering the size of the Middens Empire, there was a lot of wood coming through. “Sorry,” he said. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“How have you not been robbed blind already?” Kate asked, almost genuinely curious.

“Oh!” he chuckled. “Well, I guess I have been robbed in the past, but I–I have something for that now.” It almost sounded like he was bragging. But that made no sense. Who would brag about almost getting robbed? It was like bragging about almost losing a fight.

Deciding that she needed clarification, Kate asked, “What do you have for a thief, other than your purse?”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “ No. Well, that too. But not this. After the last time I lost some C, I made a little something in the shop.”

“Huh.” Kate knew that Gregory was at least middling competent at artificery, but he was still an apprentice for a reason. He had a long way to go before he could make anything useful. But his experiments usually were entertaining. Especially when they exploded in his face.

“A demonstration then?” he asked, sounding hopeful.

Did he want to impress Kate? Probably. Would she let him try?

“Sure,” she said. “We got another mile to go, so go ahead. Show me what you invented.”

“Phenomenal!” he said in that gratingly weak and high-pitched voice of his.

“Well?” Kate asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”

He coughed, “I need a pickpocket to try, first. Otherwise it won’t work.”

She cocked her head. It seemed foolish, but she had little enough understanding for most of what Gregory and his master got up to. A lot of math and engineering with fractions and very small tools, all of it anathema to Kate. She would much rather punch her problems, or better yet, stab them, with vigor, ad infinitum, amen. She smirked at the blasphemous thought.

“No offense, Kate?” Gregory started, hesitantly.

Kate scoffed, “Some taken.”

“You’re a little scary sometimes,” Gregory said. “And you’re probably frightening the pickpockets off. Maybe fall back a bit?”

She crossed her arms. “Fine. But you better walk fast. I don’t want to miss the guild’s business hours.”

She actually was unsure if they did have business hours or not, but it seemed like something that they might have.

“It’s not going to make a difference if I keep traveling at the same speed,” Gregory explained.

As if that made sense.

“Whatever,” Kate said, before adding, “this better be worth it though.”

While she might have complained, she soon lost any trace of that ire. She had received her third rune just that day afterall. She could now sense her vicinity with her eyes closed. Granted, the range of that perception was still limited, but it would increase with practice and use. Which might happen more quickly if she began wearing a blindfold everywhere she went. Sure, it would look strange. But results were always worth the price.

It took a while, but eventually there was a potential thief.

From the corner of her eye, she watched a grungy little deviant making its way through the crowd. It was a child, or a grossly mutated adult, or an elf, though those were rare and seldom seen outside factorums.

In this case, whatever the thing was, it was strongly deviated.

It had scaled skin in patches, their right hand had too many digits, and their left too few, and one of their eyes glowed while the other did not. Kate could almost commiserate with the thing, for it was not like there was any opportunity besides crime for it, except maybe in the quarries, or mines.

On second thought, there were likely shafts it could fit through that normal miners could not.

There was no excuse for its life-choices then.

Regardless of its foulness, Kate watched it, waiting, and somewhat excited to see whatever Gregory had planned. Even if the only result was Gregory getting robbed, Kate would still get a laugh from it. And so, Kate continued her pace, watching the grungy little thing.

It slipped past a matron, its hands tracing along the baggage of the matron’s skirts and slipping into her satchel. The matron never even realized as her purse was removed and hidden in the thing’s rags.

The pickpocket had skill, Kate would give it that.

But even if it was skilled, surely someone would have seen it–it looked out of place. But the High Guard walked by without giving it a first glance. The Low Guard never stormed from their watch points. And the Barons Guard continued taxing shops as though a creep were not in the midst.

The crowds could not be so thick as to prevent any from noticing the creature.

Kate began to believe that the entire city was blind. Or maybe, they all just lacked her third rune that granted her a higher form of perception. Whatever it was, Kate continued to watch.

The thing was making its way towards Gregory’s fat looking satchel.

Kate cracked open her eyes to better watch this ‘demonstration.’ She might have also bit her lip to restrain her more martial impulses to leap into battle. The thing was likely too small to pose much of a challenge anyways.

The little deviant slipped a small scaled and taloned hand along Gregory’s pants line, all the while Gregory continued on seemingly and likely actually oblivious to the pickpocket.

The pickpocket matched Gregory’s movements but just a step behind. Its hand slipped into Gregory’s satchel. All without tugging or alerting Gregory to its movements whatsoever.

Nobody else in the crowd noticed. Nobody, except Kate that was.

The thing’s hand reached further into a satchel.

An audible click came from the satchel.

The pickpocket froze.

A ticking could be heard, like a watch, except increasing in frequency.

The pickpocket began extracting its hand, working its way out more quickly than it should.

“Huh?” Gregory uttered, sounding perplexed, as though this entire thing was not his idea in the first place.

Before the pickpocket extracted itself, there was a popping sound, and then a light, almost imperceptible pink flash. Kate smelled ozone.

“Aieee!” the pickpocket wailed.

People glanced around, looking for the source of the commotion. Still, no eyes landed on the pickpocket. Something was definitely up with it–maybe a glyph of some sort. But how would it have gotten one? Maybe one of Skingineer’s?

The pickpocket leapt away and spun in mid-air, and hit the ground sprinting, ducking and weaving into the crowd, brushing aside legs and panicking pedestrians as an unknown thing brushed against their legs.

Kate bit down on both lips, but her lungs began to convulse as she resisted the urge to chortle. To some success.

“Ah–Ahh–Ahhh!” Gregory yelped, patting down at his trousers by the satchel, where cloth had been blackened and singed. “Kate, help!” he cried.

Kate could no longer resist. She laughed and bent double, slapping her knee. It was just too much. First the pickpocket scaring random nobodies, then Gregory utterly failing… Kate wiped an imaginary tear from her eye as she finally got hold of herself. She came to help her friend.

“Some demonstration,” Kate taunted. “Your little pickpocket escaped,” Kate said.

“Nevermind that!” Gregory shouted, continuing to make a scene, though the crowds largely ignored him other than a few disapproving or disappointed glances. “How bad?” he asked.

“How bad is what?” Kate asked, a smile still threatening to show her dimples.

Smoke was wafting up off his satchel, the leather smoldered around the riven edges of a hole where something had burned its way out. The cloth of his pants had been distorted by heat, and a slight dampness leaked through the material, likely where the skin oozed.

“The burn!” he shrieked.

Kate chortled again. The wound was hardly life threatening.

“Good news, bad news,” Kate said, drawing his misery out. She used her new perception to see within the satchel, where a strange device had expanded, appeared oven hot, and had burned several pieces of scraps and ends to cinders. The wound itself looked like a thumb sized blister where the device had ejected its heat, but the heat had been a graze as opposed to a penetration. What was most interesting was the device: Kate was fairly certain it was a type of artificer crossbow or bomb, which ought to be illegal. And here he was, just earlier that day, lecturing her on illegal blood sports. The hypocrisy.

“Lay it on me,” he grimaced. Oh, that’s right, Kate remembered. She was teasing him, though it might be too much, too far, now that she really looked at his face. Real actual tears were forming in his eyes.

“Well, the good news is that you stopped the pickpocket from stealing anything.”

As she was merciful, she left off that he utterly failed to capture the pickpocket or do more than frighten it. She also left off mentioning that his device was likely illegal.

“And the bad?” he winced.

“It looks like your toy wrecked everything in the satchel.”

“I don’t care about that!” Gregory shouted, “The wound! Am I going to lose the leg?”

Kate laughed at his joke. And she would have kept laughing, but by this point, his dramatics had attracted notice from the Low Guard. Kate waved them off, and fortunately they seemed to listen to her, so far, likely thinking Gregory and Kate were playing some childish game. But if the Low Guard did search him, then they might find his device, which would then get reported to her mother. No thank you, she thought.

After smiling at the guards and waving them off, she had to recall what Gregory said, something about losing a leg.

“Of course not!” she chuckled. “I hope you’re joking, because there isn’t even any blood. It’s just a blister, you flower.”

“I’m not a flower!” Gregory protested. He then lowered his voice and looked around. Even though he was still in pain, he whispered, “It was a rad-betty.”

“A… what?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It causes tissue damage. Kills cells. Doesn’t mean there will be blood. How deep is the wound though? I might need it excised.”

“Alright, I don’t know what the gods you just said, but the wound really doesn’t look that bad.”

“How big is the wound?” Gregory asked, looking up and away. “Give it to me straight.”

Kate rolled her eyes. If it really meant that much to him though, she supposed she could inspect it a little bit closer. “You’re being ridiculous,” she said, still bending down to get a better look. “It’s about the size of my thumb-nail.”

“Can you tell how deep?” he asked.

She groaned, “Fine. Hold on.”

She jabbed her pinky in where the cloth of his pants were wet and cooked.

Gregory screamed in a disappointingly shrill voice.

Kate’s pinky went in almost up to the first knuckle. “No more than a half inch,” she said, standing back up and wiping her finger off on Gregory’s shirt.

At this point, even the Baronsguard were interested, and they almost never did anything. If this kept going, then Kate would have to have a chat with them, and that was always expensive.

“You’re being irritating,” Kate told Gregory. “If you keep acting like a child, then we’re never going to get to the guild’s office.”

“But! I need–” Gregory protested, at first too loudly, though after Kate elbowed him, he dropped in volume to a much more reasonable tone of voice. “-a–a bandage! Or a potion. At least a doctor?” he asked.

“-You’re fine!” Kate groused. “Just walk it off. You’re acting like this is the first time one of your devices backfired.”

“It was godslicking radiation, Kate!” Gregory insisted. “It never looks as bad as it is!”

“Then maybe you should have made a better device.” Kate gave him no sympathy, though the more he complained, the more Kate considered that perhaps she might not fully understand the nature of the wounds.

“-but!” Gregory started.

Kate talked over him, showing mercy. “-if you pick up the pace though, then we can swing by a physician after.”

“I need one right now!” he whined.

“No one is stopping you from going to one,” Kate said.

“You won’t go with me?” he begged.

“Only after we do the guild,” she said matter of factly.

“But…”

She raised her eyebrows.

He squirmed and winced, but then sagged his shoulders and head. “Fine. You promise we’ll go after?”

“If we have time, and it still looks like you need it? Then maybe.”

“I guess that’s the best I’ll get,” he said, finally seeing reason.

She gave him a firm nod, then set out for the mercantile quarter, towards the Caravaneer’s Guild Hall, and she set a brisk pace at that. Gregory limped at first, but he eventually stopped, apparently walking off the wound, and proving Kate right about the entire thing.

And it was only because she had been right in the first place, that as they passed several food stalls in the square outside the guild hall, that she allowed herself to be enticed by one stall in particular. Ordinarily, Kate ignored food stalls. Most of them sold sweets or pastries or fried things. But this one, the one that led her to it, smelled divine.

As she began her detour, Gregory expressed concern. “Wh–Kate! That’s not the–where are you heading?”

At first, Kate was not sure. She was following her nose, down the aisles of stalls and outdoor dining, past stores selling candied nuts and fruit.

“Kate?” he asked.

“Busy,” she grunted. She was nearing the source of the scent.

“Kate! I need a doctor,” he insisted.

“Really? You seem fine to me,” she rebuffed him. Her eyes finally landed on the divine scent. A narrow stall in a cramped out of the way space between marketplaces, recessed a slight amount to keep from view from the main arterial.

“I’m in shock!” he protested, still following along, and by doing so, once again proving Kate right. The boy was so smart in some ways, but so dumb in others. If he was really wounded, then how could he be walking?

But finally, Kate arrived at the counter made of rough hewn planks and saturated with stains and juice. The stall owner, an obese man in an apron and not much else grunted at her.

“What’re ya havin?”

“Kate!” Gregory hissed from behind her. “What’re you doing! He sells–”

“Shush,” Kate waved the boy off with a hand, while focusing on the crude menu drawn on the wall behind the man. Out of all the choices, she felt drawn to a single, most delicious one.

“Cone of liver ‘n berries,” she ordered.

“Kate!” Gregory hissed. He was ignored.

“It’ll be twenty,” the man said.

Forgetting the first protest, Gregory choked. “Twenty C?!” Gregory protested, “That’s triple what I pay for lunch! And for this?” he finished in a squeak.

“Worth it,” Kate said. “I’ll take two.” She ruffled in her pouch and started pulling Chargers from her purse. She found ten pieces, still glowing ones at that, and dropped them on the counter.

The man made the Chargers disappear then began filling two paper cones with ladles of red bits and bobs. Kate licked her lips and wiped a slight bit of drool from her lips.

“I can’t believe you’re getting that,” Gregory said, disgusted. “What sort of meat even is that?”

“Sure you wanna know?” Kate answered, mocking him.

“Lady’s right,” the man grunted, handing over the two paper cones. The bottoms of them were already saturated with juice. “Yer order.”

“Thanks!” Kate said, her smile breaking loose and flashing dimples at the man. His lips curled up, but just briefly.

“Yer welcome.”

Kate turned and offered a cone to Gregory as she nibbled a chunk from the top of hers.

“No–” Gregory refused, face looking green. “-basically cannibalism.”

“Nah, just meohr.” the man responded, even though Gregory had not been asking the merchant. Kate had already been walking away, back towards the square, nibbling on the meat.

Gregory gagged, “That’s almost the same thing.”

“No it ain’t,” the man scoffed. “Now git.”

Kate paid no mind, immersed in her meal, and focused on the destination before her. Across the square, beneath an overly large artistic rendition of a wagon wheel, was the southern administrative center of the Caravaneer’s Guild.